Reduce housing stress with some changes

Work GPA into lottery picks, change midterm timing

Housing registration for the 2011-2012 school year is over, but that doesn’t mean the stress is. The question remains: “Did you end up where you wanted or with whom you wanted?”

For students, who you live with greatly affects your overall experience at school. This year the housing process seemed especially difficult. As a sophomore entering my junior year, there were only two residence hall options for living next year–Crescent and Westview. I planned to live with three other girls, so we needed to find an additional roommate to sign up for a five-person suite.

All this activity for housing takes place the week before spring break, also known as midterm week. During an already stressful week of papers, exams and studying, getting the housing requirements in place added a great deal of additional stress and required much time and effort. There were multiple trips to Residential Life, canvassing the campus, and asking everyone we knew in the search for our needed fifth roommate.

After completing that task, we were set to sign up with what we thought was a low lottery number. We expected to get the five-person room we wanted, but when it came time for us to register there were no longer any five-person rooms available.

Once again, the search was on and with it, more stress. I spent the day in class worrying if we were going to find a sixth person within the time frame. At the last minute, we found a student willing to room with our group and we matched ourselves under MyHousing and registered.

There are multiple problems with Quinnipiac’s housing system. The first issue is the time frame chosen for registration. It’s inconvenient for students and distracting during midterms. The housing issue added unnecessary stress during an already demanding week. Spring break should’ve been relaxing and carefree. This was impossible due to dorm concerns that needed to be addressed immediately upon returning to school.

Secondly, I don’t understand why every room needs to be completely filled when Quinnipiac states that students who paid the housing deposit and didn’t sign up for a room get “placed” anywhere to fill up the rooms. How is that possible when there is no availability and the rooms are filled during registration?

And finally, the lottery numbers are distributed to students at random when it should be based on the GPA of each student. Students who work hard should be rewarded accordingly, which would give students an added incentive to excel.

There was also a great deal of confusion for students planning to study abroad in the upcoming fall semester.

Many students didn’t know whether they were supposed to submit a housing deposit and sign up for a room or not. Two of my current roommates who plan to study abroad next semester expressed how both Residential Life and the study abroad office were very unclear on what they were supposed to do.

The stress that students felt the past few weeks can be avoided with some changes to Quinnipiac’s housing process. The university needs to devise a system that can handle different-sized groups, allow well-deserving students to get first pick of rooms, and change the registration times to avoid midterm week.